Police are chasing politically imposed targets instead of dealing with real crime, leaving yobs to run amok, a top police officer says.
Sir Denis O’Connor, Chief Inspector of Constabulary, says that bureaucratic targets imposed by central Government have skewed policing priorities.
Christians have been increasingly concerned that politically-correct policies have been imposed on police forces, leading to a spate of cases where Christians have been investigated for their beliefs.
Arrested
Earlier this year two Police Officers and two Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) were involved in the arrest of a Christian street preacher.
Dale Mcalpine was arrested after he described homosexuality as a sin during a private conversation with one of the PCSOs.
Interviewed
Last year two police officers were sent to interview Pauline Howe, a Christian grandmother, because she had written to her local council objecting to a ‘gay pride parade’ in her home town.
In 2007 five police officers arrived to investigate leaflets that Church worker Julian Hurst had been handing out in public.
Investigate
Mr Hurst was handing out invites inviting people to his church’s Easter service, when a member of the public complained to the police that the literature was offensive.
And in 2005 two police officers interrogated Christian pensioners Joe and Helen Roberts after they expressed opposition to their local council spending public money on a ‘gay rights’ project.
Stop the Rot
In contrast to the attention paid to investigating Christians, socially unacceptable behaviour is often overlooked, according to Sir Denis O’Connor.
His comments were linked to a shocking new report entitled Anti-social Behaviour: Stop the Rot.
Speaking at a briefing at Beormund Community Centre Sir Dennis said: “Some people don’t think this is real policing. They have, in their own head, reinvented policing, which is policing that focuses around certain things that happen to be categorised in a piece of legislation somewhere as crime.
“This kind of area matters but it doesn’t count very much in the current system, not in the way that crime does. We can do better than this.”
Targeted
Earlier this year a report by the Civitas think-tank revealed that Christians in Britain were being unfairly targeted for hate crime prosecutions.
The report, entitled A New Inquisition: Religious Persecution in Britain Today, also warned that existing hate crime legislation poses a danger to freedom of speech.
Jon Gower Davies, the report’s author, said: “Some police forces and the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] seem to be interpreting statutes in favour of ethnic and religious minorities and in a spirit hostile to members of the majority population, defined as ‘White’ or ‘Christian’.”
Crime
In April it was revealed that guidance from the Metropolitan Police said that Muslims who launch a shoe at another person may not be committing a crime because the practice is Islamic symbolism.
Earlier in the month it had emerged that a Muslim man charged with violent disorder for throwing a shoe at a protest had his case dismissed.
The court accepted that shoe-throwing was “simply a ritual form of protest”, according to the Muslim man’s lawyer.
Banned
In March police officers in Kent were banned from asking for a person’s “Christian” name, in case it offended people from other faiths.
The call was met with dismay, with one experienced officer calling it politically correct “nonsense”.
And the Plain English Campaign questioned whether there really was anyone from other faiths who would be offended.